Top all-time · #2332
Chris Beams
Personal blog · chris.beams.ioprogramming
Chris Beams writes cbeams, a personal blog at chris.beams.io about programming. Since 2014, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 38 times, most often “How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014)”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Most-linked posts?
- How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014)24 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2017-03-16
- How to Write a Git Commit Message5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-06-23
What Hacker News says?
I would suggest making sure to explain why there staging step exists: to create coherent commits. Then go into "why distributed version control." How to write a Good Commit Message ( https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ ).
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “How to teach Git”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014) as a story · 341 points
HN discussionI read the following tutorial on the topic few years ago and it has really helped me with commit messages: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Commit messages guide”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 202 points
HN discussionI have been recommending this article to my teammates: http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Commit messages guide”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014) as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI agree here. OP's article mentions Chris Beam's page [1] and I have all our developers follow that structure which helps but ultimately the biggest strength is the final line with the link to our JIRA. [1] https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Write good git commit messages”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI always recommend this article: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ The recommendations are the same, it's longer and provides more rationale at some points.
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Write good git commit messages”Submitted How to write a Git commit message (2014) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis is a good start: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 4 points
HN discussion`squash` is a tool and it's neither good nor bad; it needs to be applied where it makes sense. The title is indeed click-baity. It would have been more interesting to read that the bug/mistake was caused as a result of squashing. It's not the case and I take issue with the way the author describes his commits. The problematic commit is described "Extract CreateTokenValidationParameters method", without an explanatio…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Fortunately, I don't squash my commits”Submitted The Internet of Small Businesses as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI wonder why is it so hard for people to right good commit messages. At my company I've actually tried trying talking in-person to people, even write a doc explaining the benefits and how to do it, pointing people to good resources like this one: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ And still, I can't get people to do it. I find it so valuable to look at commit messages that are written, that explains the why be…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Ask HN: Do you ever truly use your revision history?”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSpeaking of Git commit messages, it's worth pointing out this wiki[1], written and reviewed by some long time open source contributors. It's a bit verbose, but rewarding to the patient reader. On writing Git commit subject lines, I've come to appreciate why the imperative mood is nicer (as opposed to the and indicative mood). Some related reasoning here[2]. [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages [2] h…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Commit messages are not titles”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a good article that covers how to communicate in a pull request. I think there are two other essentials in making good pull requests. 1. Good commit messages. Follow this guide: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ 2. Following the pull request workflow correctly. Follow this guide: https://github.com/susam/gitpr Writing good and consistent commit messages make the commit log easy to read and search. Pul…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “How to write the perfect pull request (2015)”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAt about the same time, Chris Beams wrote this, which I have loved ever since: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ I note with some glee that magit colorizes my commit text and flags long lines,etc. largely in the style of this advice. The money: The seven rules of a great Git commit message Keep in mind: This has all been said before. Separate subject from body with a blank line Limit the subject line to 50 ch…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Rob Pike on good commit messages (2014)”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Good developers engineer repetition away. Great developers share what they build. Hence Git Town. As someone who has engineered repetition away and shares what he builds, I agree, and admire your gumption. > intentionally designed as a low-level and generic tool. git is high level. and opinionated. It has branches and tags baked right in. Compare to SVN or CVS where the support is second class. > requires running…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Git Town – A high-level command line interface for Git”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn a perfect world... You'd find that in the commit log for the code. Comments aren't the right place for things you forgot to do, or things that occur to you after the code sort of works. The commit message, and unit tests, are where those ideas can be best captured. I tend to point my team at this as a practice: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “Comets Are More Dangerous Than We Thought”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWould you add a full stop in an email subject? I think of commit messages like an email. The first line is just the subject and sometimes that is all you need. The body of the commit message is for describing other details. edit: Another blog has a simple reason https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ > 4. Do not end the subject line with a period > Trailing punctuation is unnecessary in subject lines. Besides, spa…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “How to write good Git commit messages”Submitted The seven rules of a great Git commit message as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother good resource I always point my developers to: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/ As someone who manages many codebases this combined with thoughtful squashed commits allows me to (1) understand at a high level what each commit does, (2) drill into each commit should I choose to in order to review what was done in more detail, and (3) review a JIRA ticket relevant to the change (which often times is mo…
Comment linking /posts/git-commit/
on “How to write good Git commit messages”Submitted How to Write a Git Commit Message (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
